{"id":13234,"date":"2025-06-25T10:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T10:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/13234\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T10:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T10:17:08","slug":"how-conflict-with-iran-could-supercharge-trumps-domestic-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/13234\/","title":{"rendered":"How conflict with Iran could supercharge Trump’s domestic agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran<\/a> has slightly dampened the threat that the United States could be further dragged into an international conflict. <\/p>\n

But many Americans are approaching the Fourth of July with a sense of trepidation if not outright fear \u2014 that such a war could still be on the horizon and that there is currently an increased risk of a terrorist attack<\/a> in America because of it. <\/p>\n

For so many reasons, we are a nation on edge<\/a>. Which is why we have to be careful to not allow our fears to overtake our commitment to civil rights. <\/p>\n

\u201cAutocrats almost always use emergencies, sometimes real ones, sometimes exaggerated ones, and sometimes invented ones … to accumulate power,\u201d said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and author of \u201cHow Democracies Die.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of the political experts I spoke with in past days said they thought President Trump planned the Iran bombing for his domestic agenda \u2014 that would be really extreme. But most shared Levitsky\u2019s concern that it is in moments of anxiety, when society is apprehensive of external threats, that authoritarians find the most fertile ground for increasing their domestic power \u2014 because too often, people willingly give up freedoms in exchange for perceived safety.<\/p>\n

Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA law professor who advised the Obama-Biden transition team on immigration policy, said that trade-off means \u201cthe situation with Iran and Trump\u2019s immigration policy are very closely intertwined.\u201d<\/p>\n

No place is more likely to see that intersection of international and domestic policy more bluntly than California, and Los Angeles in particular.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Los Angeles is a \u201ctest case,\u201d Brad Jones told me, where the Trump administration is already pushing to see how far it can go. He\u2019s a political science professor at UC Davis. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very opportunistic presidency, and any opportunity that they can use to forward their immigration agenda, I think they\u2019ll take full advantage of it,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

We already have the Marines and National Guard<\/a> on the streets, and under federal control, supposedly because Los Angeles is in the grip of violent chaos. Although Angelenos know this is ridiculous, the courts have, for now, sided with Trump that this deployment of troops on U.S. soil is within his power. And much of America, inundated with right-wing versions of current immigration protests, is seeing on a daily basis a narrative of lawlessness that seems to justify Trump\u2019s crackdowns \u2014 including the arrest or detention of Democratic lawmakers. <\/p>\n

Benjamin Radd is a professor at UCLA, an expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. He was featured in the documentary \u201cWar Game\u201d<\/a> last year about how a military insurgency could play out in the United States. <\/p>\n

Not long ago \u2014 before the National Guard was deployed in L.A. against the will of Gov. Gavin Newsom \u2014 Radd was hired by a veterans group, which he declined to identify, to game out what would happen if Trump federalized the National Guard against the will of governors and turned them on the American public. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd lo and behold, here we are now,\u201d Radd said. <\/p>\n

In his simulation, the pretend Trump didn\u2019t invoke the Insurrection Act<\/a>, a law that could further a president\u2019s ability to deploy the military within the United States. <\/p>\n

But in the real world, it\u2019s a concern that Trump would \u2014 either because of a genuine threat, or a Trumped-up one. Rudd said that would be a \u201cbig red line.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m waiting to see if this Donald Trump will actually do that, because invoking the act will be able to give him more of those emergency powers that right now are being stymied at the courts,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Los Angeles, Rudd points out, is home to a large community of Iranian Americans, of which he is a member.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a huge stretch of the imagination to dream up a scenario in which the government sees this community as a potential threat if the conflict in the Middle East continues, as Japanese Americans were once viewed as a threat during World War II. Rudd said he didn\u2019t see the likelihood of a mass internment, but pointed out that the government has already detained and deported students speaking out on the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho gets swept up in that when you\u2019re dealing with ethically diverse metropolises like Los Angeles that have a complex background and mix of people?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

Already, the administration has announced the arrests of 11 undocumented Iranians across the U.S. in the last few days. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out \u2014 and we are,\u201d Homeland Security Department Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. \u201cWe don\u2019t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump\u2019s mandate to secure the homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s \u201centire playbook on immigration has been to characterize immigration as invasion and immigrants as invaders,\u201d Motomura said. \u201cHaving a military conflict with Iran allows Trump to link any actions by Iran or its proxies as further evidence of invasion … and as even further proof that he must take drastic emergency measures against foes both domestic and foreign.\u201d <\/p>\n

Levitsky said that the \u201cTrump administration is clearly learning how useful it is\u201d to portray immigration as a national security emergency. He points out that the deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador this year was supposedly necessary because it was depicted as an attack on America by members of the Tren de Aragua gang, although there was little evidence of such a planned incursion. <\/p>\n

But the narrative of immigration as a foreign offensive has stuck \u2014 remember when \u201cshithole countries\u201d were supposedly purposefully emptying prisons and mental hospitals to send murderers and rapists to the U.S.?<\/p>\n

And so many people accepted whatever erosion of rights these deportations meant in exchange for the perception of living in safer communities \u2014 never mind that the reality is that most of those now trapped in that Salvadoran prison are not violent criminals. <\/p>\n

Success with that tactic has left the administration increasingly eager to capitalize on fearmongering and \u201clooking for ways to use language like insurgency or emergency that frees it from from legal constraints,\u201d Levitsky said. \u201cAnd war is a great way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones warned that even just stoking concerns that \u201cthere\u2019s cells or there\u2019s people on the inside\u201d wishing to do us harm could be justification enough for more disintegration of rights. <\/p>\n

Although all of that sounds dire, it\u2019s important to remember that it hasn\u2019t happened yet, and it may never happen. And if it does, it does not mean there\u2019s no recourse to protect our civil rights \u2014 the people still have power. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a single strategy, a single slogan, a single movement, a single group, a single leader, a single protest,\u201d Levitsky said. \u201cThere are literally 1,000 different ways for people to express their opposition to what\u2019s going on, and what\u2019s important is that Americans engage.\u201d <\/p>\n

Part of that engagement is accepting that democracy is not a given, and that American democracy holds no special powers to survive, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, that\u2019s why we\u2019re losing our democracy,\u201d Levitsky said. \u201cBrazilians don\u2019t have this problem. South Koreans do not have this problem. … Germans don\u2019t have this problem. People in Spain don\u2019t have this problem. Chileans, Argentinians do not have this problem. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll those societies have a collective memory of authoritarianism. All those societies know what it means to lose a democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cAmericans don\u2019t have an idea.\u201d <\/p>\n

Our greatest threat right now isn\u2019t Trump or what he may or may not do. It\u2019s our inability to believe that authoritarianism really is creeping up on us, that it could happen here. <\/p>\n

And that all it might take is denial with a chaser of fear to topple a democracy that once felt unbreakable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Iran has slightly dampened the threat that the United States could be…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[13999,1582,276,13997,113,7837,13995,83,2961,224,2444,5337,3546,6172,1807,13996,13994,277,4352,13998],"class_list":{"0":"post-13234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-benjamin-radd","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-civil-right","12":"tag-conflict","13":"tag-democracy","14":"tag-immigration-agenda","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-times","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-people","21":"tag-power","22":"tag-president-trump","23":"tag-problem","24":"tag-steven-levitsky","25":"tag-trump","26":"tag-trump-administration","27":"tag-u-s-soil"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114743492329882837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}